HPE announced that Earth Sciences New Zealand (formally NIWA) of Aotearoa (New Zealand) selected HPE Cray XD2000, purpose-built for AI and simulation workloads, to accelerate the organization’s environmental science and precision of meteorological forecasting.

The new system, named Cascade, replaces Earth Sciences New Zealand’s aging high performance computing (HPC) system and delivers a threefold increase in computational power for researchers to run multiple AI-powered simulations simultaneously for more accurate weather predictions.  The new system supports Earth Sciences New Zealand’s mission to strengthen the country’s resilience against weather and climate-related hazards, such as wildfires and flooding from heavy rainfall.

Cascade is powered by AMD 4th Gen EPYC processors and tightly coupled with HPE GreenLake for File Storage to deliver a highly performant, simplified storage environment and enable 19 petabytes of data to accelerate local research, supporting faster decision-making and more informed crisis management.